DOMESTIC TROUBLES—CONTEMPLATION OF DEATH. 239 
driven from the wigwam. The husband stands by and looks placidly on, 
and when all is over he accepts the situation, retaing in his lodge the 
woman who has conquered the territory. But if his heart follows the beaten 
one, he will presently abandon the victress and with the other seek a new 
and distant abode. It is very seldom that an Indian expels his wife. Ina 
moment of passion he may strike her dead, or, as above, ignominiously 
slink away with another, but the idea of divorcing and sending away a wife 
does not occur to him. 
A wife thus abandoned and having a young child is justified by her 
friends in destroying it on the ground that it has no supporter. A child 
orphaned by his father’s desertion is called “the devil’s own” (lol’-chi-bus, 
from /ol'-chet, “the devil”). 
For most diseases the shaman sucks the affected part until it is black 
and blue. Jor a headache they bleed themselves with flints, or beat their 
noses until the blood flows profusely. Their practice in midwifery is some- 
times terribly severe, though effectual. In a hard case the woman is caused 
to sit against the side of the wall or against a tree, and is kneaded with the 
hands, or laid on the floor and trodden upon! But severe as their treat- 
ment is, it is more sensible than civilized methods, so far as natural appli- 
ances are concerned. During accouchement the woman remains in a lodge 
remote from camp, and no man is allowed to see or even approach near her. 
When death becomes inevitable they contemplate it without terror. 
There is a strange, morbid sentiment among them, which sometimes causes 
anaged woman to wear wound around her for months the rope wherewith she 
is to be wrapped when a corpse. ‘There seems also to be in this act a piteous 
plea for a little span of toleration; or perhaps the poor old wretch, bitterly 
conscious that she has outlived her beauty and her usefulness as a slave, 
seeks thus to remind her relatives, impatient for release, that she will bur- 
den them now only a little longer. When dead, the body is doubled up 
and wrapped with grass ropes, skins, mats, and the like into a ball. A 
wealthy Indian will have enough strings of shell-money passed under one 
shoulder and over the other to make the corpse nearly round. All the pos- 
‘sessions of the departed that can be conveniently got into the grave are cast 
in, nowadays including knives and forks, vinegar cruets, old whisky bottles, 
